In "Dr No" Connery has brought to the screen for the first time the British secret agent created by novelist Ian Fleming.

He was selected for the role not only because he is 6ft 2in tall, and rugged, but because he has made rapid strides as an actor in the past year.

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"He's a man who makes his own rules..." Sean Connery as Bond

Photo: United Artists Corporation

"The only real difficulty I found in playing Bond was that I had to start from scratch," Connery told me.

"Nobody knew anything about him, after all. Not even Fleming. Does he have parents? Where does he come from? Nobody knows. But we played it for laughs, and people seem to feel it comes off quite well."

Connery is of particular interest to Australians because he is expected here later this year to co-star with his wife, Diane Cilento, in the D'Arcy Niland story, "Call Me When the Cross Turns Over."

At our lunch, however, the actor's concern was James Bond – drawn by Mr Fleming as a pleasure-loving, woman-loving, death-dealing iconoclast.

Sean Connery and his Australian-born wife, actress Diane Cilento.

Photo: William Mottram

"I don't suppose I'd really like Bond if I met him. He's a man who makes his own rules. That's fine so long as you're not plagued with doubts. But if you are – and most of us are – you're sunk," said Mr Connery.

"That's why Bond appeals so much to women. By their nature, they are indecisive and a man who is absolutely sure of everything comes as a godsend."

"I suppose, too, the Walter Mitty in every man makes him admire Bond a little. That's where writer Ian Fleming is so clever.

"Fleming told me that he studied psychology in Munich before the war," Connery added.

"I don't suppose I'd really like Bond if I met him. He's a man who makes his own rules. That's fine so long as you're not plagued with doubts. But if you are – and most of us are – you're sunk."

Sean Connery

By profession the foreign manager o the London "Sunday Times", Fleming spends two months of every winter in Jamaica where he has a seaside home, and does his novel-writing there.

Connery and the rest of the unit made "Dr No" (today's Regent film), in colour, on location in Jamaica, with the author and Noel Coward as spectators.

"I'm grateful to the film for giving my career a lift like this, but I must be careful not to get too typed.

"I hope to make a completely different type of film." Connery concluded, and his Australian role should take care of that.

But Bond, who drinks champagne where Connery has a whiskey, is not giving the actor much rest.

His second Bond adventure, "From Russia With Love" goes before the United Artist cameras in London next week.

The company moves on to Istanbul in April and later scenes will be filmed in Venice.